He cut billions from the Defense. Today, Nick Hækkerup stands at the decision: "There were no threats against Denmark"

Nick Hækkerup (S) was not prepared to be the defense minister.

For a long time, he believed he would be the finance minister. On a whiteboard, he wrote down everything he could think of regarding tax policy disputes.

When the phone rang, the message from Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt (S) was different:

"It's Helle. Would you like to be part of the team? Good, so you will be the defense minister. Goodbye."

Thus, Hækkerup was able to start from scratch on his whiteboard, and the task was quite clear: The newly appointed minister had to find savings of 15% in the Defense - equivalent to 2.7 billion kroner.

Per year.

Nick Hækkerup was the defense minister from October 2011 to August 2013, and he is the minister in recent times who has cut the most in the Defense.

During his tenure, the number of conscripts was reduced, pay during military training became equivalent to SU, officer training was halved in length, contracts for constables were changed, between 1,000 and 1,500 positions were eliminated, and so many barracks were closed.

Decisions that still haunt the Defense 15 years later.

When Hækkerup took office as minister, a broad majority in the Folketing had already agreed to cut significantly in the Defense. Now it was up to Hækkerup to negotiate the savings.

"Would it have been rarer to have come in and been the happy giver? It would certainly have been, but it was not the premise. It was not so, the time was," says Nick Hækkerup today.

"Everyone was in agreement - not least standing on what the Defense Intelligence Service said - that there was no threat to Denmark. That was the assessment at the time, and therefore there was broad political agreement to withdraw a little more of the peace dividend."

The words fall on Nick Hækkerup's office at the Bryggeriforeningen, where the former Social Democrat minister is now director.

In a new article series, Berlingske sets a series of prominent former and current figures in and around the Defense in the hope of better understanding the challenges that the Defense faces today.

For Nick Hækkerup's case, it is about how it was to stand at the helm of the Defense in a historically lean time. Why he ended up in a bitter power struggle with his own organization, which he eventually accused of operating illicitly. And not least, what his own responsibility for the state of the Defense in 2025 is.

Especially in relation to the last point, critics are quick to point to Nick Hækkerup when political responsibility for the fact that the Defense is where it is today is placed.

But even Hækkerup insists that he would make the same decisions again if he had the opportunity to do so.

"What stood there at the time was a worldview defined by the fact that nothing would happen. There was no threat to Denmark, and we had a sense of peace that we could cut the Defense. Now the situation has completely changed," says Nick Hækkerup:

"Politics takes place in such a way that there are some positions one stands for. And then there is a situation one stands in. And then decisions are made, which become concrete politics. What changes over time, it is not the positions one stands for, but rather the situation one stands in."

It was exactly this mantra that sent Nick Hækkerup into a dispute with the party leadership at a group meeting, and ended up costing him the post as defense minister.

We will return to this later.

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Eroded foundation

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Quite shortly after his appointment, Nick Hækkerup found himself in regular conflict with a large part of the organization he was in charge of.

In addition to having to find savings of 2.7 billion kroner, Hækkerup - something quite unusual in the Defense - decided to find a new defense chief through a public application process.

At the same time, Hækkerup - along with his then department chief, Lars Findsen - decided to strip the incoming defense chief of a large part of the responsibility and decision-making power that had characterized the position.

Criticism from within ranks was leveled at Nick Hækkerup, who was accused of wanting to hire a "desk general," as well as the then defense spokesman for Venstre, Troels Lund Poulsen, accused Hækkerup of politicizing the defense chief position.

Hækkerup explains today the decision with the fact that he tried to deal with a "relatively closed system with its own culture and its own pride."

"The Defense is a place where one is proud. A place with veneration for what one has done. But also a place where the exchange between the Defense and civilian life is not particularly large. It is a closed environment, where a number of high-ranking officers know each other - they have been stationed together, or they have been 'married' to each other."

To explain his point, Hækkerup has noted down a quote from the second president of the United States, John Adams:

"I must study politics and war, so that my sons have the freedom to study mathematics and philosophy."

Hækkerup looks up from his neatly written notes.

"The Defense is a significant part of the foundation for having a sovereign state. But maybe we have forgotten that a little in Denmark. My experience at the time I was defense minister was that the understanding in the broad public for what the Defense's unique and important role is, was eroded."

"And one of the reasons for that was that the Defense did not fill as much in society, but also that it was a relatively closed system."

Is it not clear that the Defense's foundation is eroding when it is cut by 15%?

"It is also a part of that. But I do not remember any in the Defense, I do not remember any commentators, I do not remember any political parties that reached out and asked if we would rather rearm.

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The right structure

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If you ask today what Nick Hækkerup considers his greatest success as defense minister, the answer is that Denmark, with him as the highest authority for the Defense, conducted an activist foreign policy.

"We used our defense, when there was no threat to the Kingdom's borders, actively out in the world."

In those years, deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, Mali, bombing raids in Libya and pirate fighting off the coast of Somalia meant that Hækkerup assessed a need for a greater degree of political control of the Defense.

Today, Hækkerup acknowledges that he politicized the position of defense chief.

"When one has a defense that is present out in the world in that way, there is an incredibly large political focus on each individual mission. Therefore, it was necessary to be able to match the political interest that was present out in the world, to change the role of the defense chief," says Hækkerup.

Therefore, he also believes that it makes sense that Troels Lund Poulsen, as sitting defense minister today, has given a large part of the defense chief's powers back.

"At the time, it was, in my opinion, the right structure, because we had a defense that should be present out in the world," says Hækkerup.

"When one is in a situation like the one we are in now, where we are building a territorial defense, the need is for politicians to step back and leave the purely military strategy to the Defense itself. That is also why the agreement has been made that politicians will keep their hands off the new purchases."

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Illoyal types

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Just two years into Nick Hækkerup's tenure as defense minister, he was fired.

The mantra about the fact that it is the situation and not the positions that change in politics ended up catapulting Hækkerup into a conflict with Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt and Finance Minister Bjarne Corydon.

At a meeting in Socialdemokratiet, Hækkerup openly criticized the government's tax cut plan with the words: "The good thing about being a social democrat is that when one has been it long enough, one has reached the point where one thinks everything."

He was demoted to trade and European minister.

Now, Hækkerup felt suddenly free to answer the critical voices that, during his tenure as defense minister, had criticized him as minister.

In an interview with Berlingske ( https://www.berlingske.dk/politik/haekkerup-illoyale-oberst-hachel-typer-skader-forsvaret?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=AerBZYMNDeQxrF0kWeqwyHIwtAe06I3dVB2aqTCXZJ1O1Vx8uktu7PBvWfKwMSX_gdA%3D&gaa_ts=67f3a679&gaa_sig=5oauwfdXozjOp91zxNQzSHcxAv-H9-MzSPlLuSp94-lOw9z-lu8DkLAWYq4UpjQ09lt_z0QrcNpPkQsfN5c4mA%3D%3D ), Hækkerup accused the Defense after his dismissal of being marked by "oberst Hachel-types, who run their own political agendas."

He also accused unnamed high-ranking individuals in the Defense of acting illicitly towards him as minister.

"Decisions were undercut, discredited and put in a bad light, and information was leaked to the press," it sounded at the time from Hækkerup.

Asked if Nick Hækkerup did not himself act illicitly towards the Defense's DNA and history by undercutting the normal business procedures in connection with the appointment of a new defense chief, Hækkerup replies:

"It can certainly be that I, with the experience I have today, would have done it differently. I can certainly understand if there are some who have sat with the impression that now it is my turn, and then comes a minister - who, in fact, comes and goes - and makes a mess of it all. That is very annoying."

"The difference is just that the system is set up so that it is the minister's decision. And if one is in a system that is hierarchical in that way, one must of course adjust to it."

Warning: This article was translated by a Large Language Model, in case of doubt, you can always visit the original source.